What Happened to the Concordes?
airandspace.si.edu
These days, it takes seven hours to fly from New York to London, compared to under three hours flying at twice the speed of sound on the Concorde. When I started my internship at the National Air and Space Museum, I was determined to learn why.

Why didn’t it succeed?

Concorde flights came to a screeching halt after only 27 years of operation on October 24, 2003. The reason? Excessive cost, high fares, and loud noise. On a regular flight, Concordes consumed 6,771 gallons of fuel, which quickly exceeded the profit made from the flight. In addition to that, only a total of 20 Concordes were built and no airline ordered them except for Air France and British Airways, who had to as they were state-run airlines at the time.

Oh, and a 2000 crash that killed everyone on board (109 people) and four people on the ground.

  • Skua@kbin.earth
    108·
    2 days ago

    A fun fact about Concorde: there is one aerial photo of one of them flying at supersonic speeds, and the fighter jet that the photo was taken from could barely keep up long enough to take it. Here’s the pic.

    The image was taken by Adrian Meredith who was flying a Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado jet during a rendezvous with the Concorde over the Irish Sea in April 1985. Although the Tornado could match Concorde’s cruising speed it could only do so for a matter of minutes due to the enormous rate of fuel consumption. Several attempts were made to take the photo, and eventually the Concorde had to slow down from Mach 2 to Mach 1.5-1.6 so that the Tornado crew could get the shot. The Tornado was stripped of everything to get it up to that speed as long as possible.

    https://theaviationgeekclub.com/heres-the-only-picture-of-concorde-flying-at-supersonic-speed/

      • Skua@kbin.earth
        25·
        2 days ago

        Probably would have had the same problem. Both the Tornado and the F-15 were capable of going fast enough, it’s just going fast enough for an extended period that becomes a problem. The F-15 is a bit faster but needs to carry a bunch of external fuel tanks to match the Tornado’s range. Neither of them is cruising the whole way across the Atlantic at more than mach 2 like Concorde could

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15·
        2 days ago

        IIRC the only fighters that can supercruise (go supersonic without gushing fuel out of afterburners) are super modern jets like the F22, and still not at Mach 2.

        Some older specialized craft could go Mach 2 efficiently, like blackbird or the XB-70, but they’re all long retired.

        Concorde was realistically the only plane that could do that.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          8·
          1 day ago

          The SR-71 Blackbird is the closest thing I’ve seen to evidence that we had alien technology in the 60s. That thing is fucking wild. It doesn’t even look real in photos, it looks like mediocre cg